


Mother, May I

by bobina



Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Gen, Mother-Daughter Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-17
Updated: 2015-02-17
Packaged: 2018-03-13 09:47:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 498
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3377021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bobina/pseuds/bobina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Her mother is the most beautiful woman in the world.<br/>She learns cruelty from her Mother. She is her star pupil."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mother, May I

**Author's Note:**

> Please do not copy/re-post without permission.

_she’ll tear a hole in you, the one you can’t repair//but i still love her, i don’t even care_

_~ stubborn love, the lumineers_

 

When she is small, her mother reads to her, of great men and faraway lands and untold treasures. Her mother teaches her, with bright eyes and restless hands, the importance of stories.

Firelight dances across the pages. Her mother’s voice is soft and heavy, her mother’s heartbeat beneath her ear is steady.

Her mother is the most beautiful woman in the world.

She giggles at the rise and fall of the chest beneath her cheek. She lives in the pages of the storybooks, her mother’s voice calling her home, always.

~*~*~*~

Her Mother reads to her. She is grown, and yet she is not.

She watches her Mother’s mouth, revels in the flash of danger hidden beneath soft, pink lips.

The words are always the same: news of families, of royal courts, of balls and parties. She listens only as much as she has to. In the decades since her death, her life has not changed much. She is still just a pawn, first as a prize for her father’s political dealings, now as a lure for her Mother’s victims. She doesn’t much care to know of her targets’ wealth, or connections, or family lineage. She cares only of the hunt, of soft skin under her fingertips and warm flesh under her teeth.

“Mircalla.”

Her Mother’s voice is lilting and inviting. She brings her eyes back to the newspaper in front of them. She allows her mouth to quirk a smile.

Her Mother cares for her, provides for her. Her Mother saved her. She lives for her Mother in this unlife.

~*~*~*~

“Mother, why do you love me?”

“Because you are mine, my sweet Mircalla.”

~*~*~*~

Her father tells her she has her mother’s beauty. Her dark eyes, her pale skin, her sweet smile. His nose, he laments, but she is still his prize, his favorite, his Mircalla.

~*~*~*~

She learns cruelty from her Mother. She is her star pupil.

~*~*~*~

She misses her family in the abstract.

She sits at their tables, eats their food, sleeps in their beds, but she is not like them. She is grateful. She is meek. She is a monster.

She misses her family but cannot say why. She never saw them grow old. She has never visited their graves. But she sees her mother and father in every home, sees her brothers and sisters in every child.

She misses her family and it consumes her. She cannot recall their features, the fall of her mother’s hair in the evenings after supper, the hue of her father’s beard as it gently faded from black to gray, the gap-toothed grins of her brothers, the wonder in her sisters’ eyes.

She seeks them out in the faces of strangers, fills herself with their blood in hopes of remembrance.

~*~*~*~

“Why did you choose me, Mother? Why me?”

“Because you are a glittering diamond. You are mine.”


End file.
